Affairs of the Heart

Affairs of the Heart: Men and Women Reveal the Truth about Extramarital Affairs
Interviews by Virginia Lee
1993
Weight:8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving in a lending library

I got this book for the "special value" of $1.00--the sale sticker seems to say it was in Spring of 2005.  At that time I was very pro-polyamory and distrusted marriage, despite being a serial monogamist most of the time.  I still feel strongly that polyamory can be a great thing for many people, but I am obviously not at all anti-marriage.  I am quite happily married and, if I ever think of the end of my marriage, it is to worry about the horror of one of us passing away before the other.  This happens when I talk to my neighbor whose wife died 18 months ago or if I watch a sad movie.

This book really just feels like an anthology of people proclaiming that polyamory is better or more natural than monogamy, with just a few exceptions, and less like a genuine look at a random sample of people who had affairs.  The interviewer asks some very leading questions.  On page 153, "So many women do not feel whole unless they are with a man and will tolerate incredible abuse just for that security.  Them if they fail in such a relationship, they think there is something wrong with them.  Would you say that this is why you meet so many unhappy women?"On page 85, "When did you begin to feel that marriage was not the fairy tale you had been raised to believe in?"  On page 151, "It all comes down to forgiveness, which often reduces the 'unfaithful' one to the status of a whimpering puppy.  Don't you think that it creates more anger, resentment, and humiliation--especially if the person who had the affair doesn't feel that there was anything wrong with what he or she did?" pg 150, "Some people believe that having an affair can be a healthy thing, it can revive a relationship that has gotten stuck in its patterns, or it can fulfill one partner whose needs haven't been met.  Often loving a new person can open the door and let the light in.  An affair can rekindle some joy, spontaneity, and passion in life.  An often, there's more energy to take home to the other partner, if he or she can be open enough to accept it.  Do you think such a scenario is possible?"

I guess I was hoping that this would just be a random sample of people who all had different or unique stories or just different thoughts about their stories.  I felt like this was promotional material for affairs at worst and just annoying at best.  The interviewees took little to no responsibility for their own actions, frequently whining about and blaming their spouses.  I found most of them to be obnoxious and unpleasant.  Consent.  Consent makes all the difference always.  Polyamory is good when all parties have respect for each other, have open communication, and consent.  An affair by default has none of those things.

Don't get me wrong.  I think there are good people that have affairs for a variety of complicated reasons.  I just do not think this book really gave voice to that or helped anyone have a more clear understanding of that.  I just think there was too much bias.

Redefining Our Relationships

Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines For Responsible Open Relationships  Wendy-O Matik
2002
Weight: 8 oz
Method of Disposal: Gave to a Friend

I just re-read this book, and I really enjoyed its simplicity and message.  Oddly, I am in the position of doing the opposite.  I have entered into a monogamous relationship and have decided that I am ready to commit to one person for the rest of my life.  While this might seem counterintuitive to this book, I am a firm believer that guidelines from the world of polyamory are useful and very needed for people whether they are in a monogamous or open relationship.  The critical insight on jealousy and communication benefit us all.  These books expound on being thankful for what you have, allowing your partner to grow as a person, realizing that you do not own someone else, examining the jealousy you will inevitably encounter and finding ways of dealing with it in a healthy manner, and loving yourself and your partner(s).  I am thankful I got the chance to read it again.  I will always be respectful, thankful to, and happy to know that there are people out there in polyamorous relationships.  I will continue to learn from them, as I do from people and books on monogamy.

I am focusing now on building trust and respect in my own relationship, remembering to always work on communication and our mutual growth, and ensuring that we focus on the things that we are lucky for and not always the things we wish we could change--like distance.  I am grateful that I have an optimistic partner that gets me on the right track when I start to stray and who is willing to hear me out when I push her to think about new ways of being and doing things. 

I gave this book to a friend who is thinking a lot about the relationship she is in.  It may not help her like it has me over the years, but it is worth a shot!

 

I Do/I Don't

I Do I Don't: Queers on Marriage  Edited by Greg Wharton and Ian Philips
2004
Weight: 1.1 lbs
Method of Disposal: Leaving at Hodge Podge

I picked up this book after the two cases about same-sex marriage were heard by the Supreme Court this year.  I bought it when it first came out, and I was anti-same-sex marriage, but I did not read it because it talked SO MUCH about, ugh/bleck/groan, marriage.  This time, when I picked it up, I was not even feeling just pro-okay-gay-people-should-have-the-right-even-though-it-is-a-dumb-idea thoughts but even thoughts that, MAYBE, I would like to be married one day.

I read boring essays, great ones, semi-amusing ones, ambivalent ones, and even one highly offensive one comparing gays wanting to be married to "Jews praying for Zyklon B," among other truly fucked up, non-comparable things.  A couple hundred pages in I never wanted to hear the words "same-sex" "gay marriage" or "civil union" ever again.  I was glad I stuck it out though because I read a unique and unexpectedly insightful piece by Sarah Silverman that made me respect her a lot more than I had previously, and it helped me look at some things differently.

In the end, I still recognize that the history of "marriage" is fraught with problematic and oppressive issues, that it is frequently a union that people get into for all the wrong reasons, and that it should not be the number one issue of the gay rights movement.  I also think that, MAYBE, I might like the option of making the decision for myself one day.

All About Love

All About Love: New Visions  by Bell Hooks
2001
Weight: 8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Gave to my friend, Jasmin

I decided to re-read All About Love a few months back.  Bell Hooks is a favorite, for me and many of my feminist peers, but I have not read anything of hers in years.  I will confess that when I first picked this book up, I was under impressed.  It wasn't bad, but I did not feel like I was learning anything, and I thought it was very hetrerosexual-focused.  It all seemed so basic.  My dear friend told me at the time that it would be a good thing if it was.  It was written so that people could understand it.\

I kept reading it.  I was blown away by the last half, and I never wanted to start another relationship without having the other person read it--whether that was a romantic relationship or a purely a platonic one. 

I loved that Hooks did not undermine the value of the love of a friend. 

She writes, "Most of us are raised to believe we will either find love in our first family (our family of origin) or, if not there, in the second family we are expected to form through committed romantic couplings, particularly those that lead to marriage and/or lifelong bondings.  Many of us learn as children that friendship should never be seen as just important as family ties.  However, friendship is the place where a great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community(134)."

I have always been interested in the love of friends, as I have always found so much of what I need in those relationships and am always caught off-guard when a person I have just started dating cannot understand their role in my life.  I have some very intense, passionate friendships that test the boundaries I was taught about by a couple-focused/family-focused society.

I LOVED reading about community, society, and love.  I dwelled a lot on Capitalism/consumerism being anti-love after reading her section on greed.  She writes,

"Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption.  A culture of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish (105)."

If we live in a world where people are harmed by our very purchasing of clothes (sweatshops), coffee (how much are the grower's being paid/are rainforests being cut down), our mardi gras beads (sweatshops), the soda we drink (worker's rights/labor unions), on and on, then how will we find a true way to love and connect with others?  If money and instant gratification are the goals then how will we learn the patience and dedication needed to maintain our self-care and our love of others?

Everyone I know has a lot to learn about self-love, myself included.  Hooks is being open and honest with us when she says, "One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming of receiving from others.  There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that.  Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am.  It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself (67-68)."

She writes, "The confusion arises because most people who think they are not lovable have this perception because at some point in their lives they were socialized to see themselves as unlovable by forces outside their control.  We are not born knowing how to love anyone, either ourselves or someone else.  However, we are born able to respond to care (53)."

At the very start of the book, she talks about how it is not useful to see love as something you cannot define or describe, something that just happens to you.  You know it when you feel it and all that nonsense.  She argues that, "When we intervene on mystifying assumptions that love cannot be defined by offering workable, useful definitions, we are already creating a context where love can begin to flourish (13)."

I want love to flourish, in all avenues of my life, in my friend's lives, and in the lives of those I will never meet.

Okay, I will leave you with that.  You should read the book.